The Stax Report's "Best Picture" Edition

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Great films that lost the Oscar.

By Stax

Stax here with a "Best Picture" edition. For all those still gaping over Crash's upset over Brokeback Mountain in the Best Picture category at Sunday's Oscars, take heart. It's nothing new. Many great films have been nominated for Best Picture and lost, often to films that are just as great but sometimes not. What is striking is how many films that lost Best Picture have remained more important and well remembered by popular culture than those that did win.

For example, 1939, arguably considered the greatest year in movies, yielded ten Best Picture nominees (including Wizard of Oz and Stagecoach) that have all remained beloved classics, yet only one could win (Gone With the Wind). And everyone knows 1941's Citizen Kane as "the greatest film of all time" that still managed to lose Best Picture. There's also High Noon, It's A Wonderful Life, Star Wars, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jaws, E.T., The Philadelphia Story, The Maltese Falcon, Grand Illusion, Sergeant York, The Pride of the Yankees, Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Lost Horizon, A Star is Born, A Place in the Sun, The King and I, The Guns of Navarone, Mary Poppins, Doctor Zhivago, Bonnie and Clyde, Raiders of the Lost Ark, M*A*S*H, The Exorcist, Saving Private Ryan ... see my point? All of these films have influenced innumerable subsequent films and permeated the popular culture yet they didn't get any love on Oscar night.

Here are more examples of great movies that Oscar overlooked (but that you probably think won):

To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962, dir. Robert Mulligan. This beloved classic set in Depression-era Alabama follows upright attorney Atticus Finch (Oscar winner Gregory Peck) who defends Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), a black man accused of raping a white girl. The story, based on Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is seen through the eyes of Atticus' precocious daughter Scout (Mary Badham). Robert Duvall made his big-screen debut as the strange recluse and local boogeyman Boo Radley whom Scout, her brother Jem (Philip Alford), and pal Dill Harris (John Megna) are obsessed with.

Sunset Boulevard, 1950, dir. Billy Wilder. This beloved classic is still the most damning portrait of Hollywood yet produced. The film is narrated by (now dead) screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) who can't catch a break in the picture business anymore. No one's buying his work (it's not that great anyway) and he's short on money (the repo man is looking for him). A twist of fate causes Gillis to cross paths with faded silent movie star Nora Desmond (Gloria Swanson, herself a faded silent film star) who lives in seclusion in her gloomy L.A. mansion. Nora soon convinces Joe to help pen her comeback project, an epic about Salome. Their bizarre relationship seals Joe's fate. In the end, Joe is shot dead, his corpse left floating in Nora's pool. Sunset Boulevard is still as funny, twisted, and powerful as it was fifty years ago.

The Shawshank Redemption, 1994, wr/dir. Frank Darabont. This widely acclaimed adaptation of the Stephen King story stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne, a banker wrongly convicted of murder. Andy's determination, hopefulness and fortitude inspires the inmates of Shawshank prison, especially cagey lifer "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman). Darabont later adapted another King tale, The Green Mile, for the screen.

The Grapes of Wrath, 1940, dir. John Ford. Nunnally Johnson scripted this adaptation of John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the journey to California made by a poverty-stricken Oklahoma family during The Great Depression. Shortly after Ex-con Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) returns to his ravaged homeland, he and his family (led by mother Jane Darwell) make their arduous trek westward. The Joads' increasingly grim encounters along the way make Grapes an uncharacteristically downbeat film for John Ford. Still, there is some hope to be found at the end of this poignant tale of survival. The Grapes of Wrath also features haunting cinematography by Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane).

The Grapes of Wrath

All the President's Men, 1976, dir. Alan J. Pakula. ATPM is based on the best-selling expose written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two young Washington Post reporters whose crackling articles (citing the then-shadowy informant nicknamed "Deep Throat") helped uncover the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. The President himself only appears via stock footage but his presence is felt throughout the film. Untried journalist Woodward (producer Robert Redford) teams with the more seasoned Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and together they begin to "follow the money" at the suggestion of "Deep Throat" (Hal Holbrook). Woodward & Bernstein's investigation takes them through the oppressive concrete structures and firmly entrenched bureaucracy of D.C., causing real and imagined threats to their professional and physical well-being. Jason Robards, Jr. won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.

Apocalypse Now, 1979, dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Loosely based on Joseph Conrad's classic novel Heart of Darkness, this acclaimed Vietnam War epic is as well known for its infamously long and arduous shoot as it is for its content. (These experiences were recounted in the great documentary, Hearts of Darkness.) John Milius wrote the initial screenplay about the mission of Captain Willard (Martin Sheen, who replaced Harvey Keitel) to terminate the insane and near-mythical Col. Kurtz (bug-swallowing Marlon Brando), a renegade military commander.

Along the way, Willard encounters the surf-loving Lt. Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall) who loves "the smell of napalm in the morning," and experiences a series of visceral episodes that remind us how much war really is hell. Indeed, Willard's journey deep into the jungle &#Array; and what happens once he arrives at Kurtz's compound &#Array; mirrors his own descent into madness. Coppola revamped the film for a 2001 reissue, Apocalypse Now Redux.

Raging Bull, 1980, dir. Martin Scorsese. Robert De Niro won an Oscar as Best Actor for his stunning portrayal of boxer Jake La Motta in this gritty, black & white biopic. Insanely jealous, self-indulgent, and as vicious at home as he is in the ring, the brutish Jake alienates both his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) and his second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty). This elegiac but relentless film follows Jake from his boxing heyday to his bloated later years as a nightclub act. Despite several other amazing attempts, Scorsese and De Niro have never topped this collaboration.